


Between the Stars

by magikfanfic



Category: Longmire (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 00:32:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13752459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: The moment that Henry is close enough to touch, Walt’s hand is on his shoulder, heavy, solid, coiling over and pressing tighter into the skin than he should need to. It’s not as if they haven’t been separated before. It’s not as if bad things haven’t happened to both of them, separately and together, over the years that they have known one another, a road that stretches out almost as far as Walt can see when he considers his life. There was a life before Henry, of course, but it’s blurry, faded at the edges the way that things in the past can become, especially bits from childhood, rubbed soft, almost to the point of breaking.Set directly after s3 e3 “Miss Cheyenne” so spoilers for the series up to that point. No other real warnings apply.





	Between the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> My feelings about this ship continue.
> 
> Forgive me all the literary allusions. I'm a sap for them, and Walt seems like the sort who would enjoy them as much as I would.

The moment that Henry is close enough to touch, Walt’s hand is on his shoulder, heavy, solid, coiling over and pressing tighter into the skin than he should need to. It’s not as if they haven’t been separated before. It’s not as if bad things haven’t happened to both of them, separately and together, over the years that they have known one another, a road that stretches out almost as far as Walt can see when he considers his life. There was a life before Henry, of course, but it’s blurry, faded at the edges the way that things in the past can become, especially bits from childhood, rubbed soft, almost to the point of breaking.

It’s almost like Henry’s fist connecting with his face during their first meeting is the line that separates sharp and concise memories from all those fuzzy ones. When Walt looks back on his past–the time before Cady, before Martha–the thing that he recalls with the most clarity, the thing that stands out, time and time again is Henry. Always Henry who seems to have been shifting from one type of displeasure to another for as long as he has been alive. 

Henry is clear. Henry is stark color against a backdrop of mottled shades. Henry never lets him flinch away from something because that is not the kind of man that Henry is and that is not the kind of man that Henry will let him be, either. 

So Walt curls his fingers over his shoulder, hangs on like he has hung on in the past when he’s had need, and Henry is warm and solid and there under his grip. They walk to the truck in near silence, companionably, because sometimes that is the only thing that Walt can manage, but in his head, the words repeat a thousand times over, “You’re never going back.” It’s almost enough to drive him to distraction, but they’re true. He means them.

“Walt,” Henry’s voice finds him when they have reached the truck, and Walt has still not loosened his grip even though he knows there’s no easy way for them to get into the vehicle this way. He knows, and yet he doesn’t want to let Henry go, worries he might fade away into nothing like the vision he saw behind the fence when he and Vic rolled up on that school for girls. 

“Walt, I am not going anywhere,” Henry says, as though he knows what’s going through his friend’s mind, and Walt wonders whether it’s his face giving him away or just that long stretch of years they have walked together. 

“I just,” Walt starts, stops, sighs and, with great effort, removes his hand from Henry’s shoulder; he does not fade. Henry reaches out to clap his own hand on Walt’s shoulder for a moment before climbing into the truck. 

There are many things a man isn’t supposed to do and one of those is falling apart in the parking lot of a prison in potential view of the people he’s gonna have to work with later even if he has just gotten his best friend, the man that means more to him than almost everyone in the world, back where he can see him and talk to him and touch him properly. And it takes Walt about ten seconds to remember that he cannot fall apart here and now before he gets into the driver’s side of the truck to find Henry sitting in the passenger seat, looking at him with eyes that are eternal questions, eyes that Walt has been waking to in the night, eyes that Walt has felt fixed on him for years. Sometimes their weight is heavier than others. This is one of those times when they feel as big and dark and treacherous as the sky, and he remembers nights spent camping on the rez with Henry. Slow kisses stolen under the wavering moon because they could not trust the sun with what was between them back then. Walt still finds it difficult now. He’s never been a public sort of man. 

“Henry, I,” he starts but the words run out before he can get to them, clamber off his tongue, disappear into the horizon. Another thing he cannot do while sitting in his truck in front of this prison is pull Henry to him and press his fingers against his cheeks and touch their foreheads together and remind him that he never forgot him, has never forgotten him, will never forget him. They are in this together, bound as tightly and inexorably as he was with Martha, as they were with Martha when they were all together, something precious that did not last as long as it should have, that will never be quite the same now, but that does not mean it cannot still be something wonderful.

“Drive, Walt,” Henry says, as though he knows that there are things a man can’t do in the parking lot of prison or perhaps would rather just do them somewhere else. Not that Walt can blame him. “I believe that this,” he taps one foot against the other, reminding Walt of the ankle bracelet there, “requires me to be home shortly. It would be an awful lot of work for nothing if we were to violate my bail on the first day.”

Walt starts the truck and then settles his right hand back on Henry’s shoulder. Henry says nothing, just leans in a little closer, an amount small enough that any casual observer, any passing car probably wouldn’t even notice, but Walt notices, which is what matters. The ride is silent for awhile but not uncomfortable. Walt tries not to think too hard about the bruises on Henry’s face or let his imagination provide him with details of the other marks that are probably on Henry’s body, the ones he can’t see, hidden under his clothes, masked by his pride, and Henry, silent, stoic, looking out the window and humming along with the old country that warbles, quietly, from the radio, just seems pleased with the wind, the landscape, freedom. Every time Walt looks at him, he is reminded of just how much Henry was willing to do, willing to sacrifice for him. 

Walt thought he finally understood the lengths of sacrifice when he managed to talk Henry into taking him to the desert, into going through a ritual to help save Cady, but he knows now that he has not learned the definition. Or all the ways in which sacrifice can be carried by people, not a burden because the weight means nothing compared to how heavy love can be. Walt thinks he’d drag his love for Henry across a desert, like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain only for it to roll back to its starting point, eternally. Only his would be no punishment. It would be a gesture of care, of commitment, even if it wouldn’t be enough, not really to fully convey what he feels.

“I saw you,” he says, eyes still on the road, though his hand on Henry’s shoulder squeezes once, possibly too hard because Henry settles his own over it to catch at the fingers. 

“Oh?” Henry prods because he has always known that sometimes Walt needs a little help procuring his words, dragging them out for everyone to see. Sometimes Walt feels like Ahab, his emotions that white whale that drives him to distraction, always somehow out of reach and then destroying him when found.

“I saw you. Trapped behind a fence. Caged. And then you vanished.”

“You were dreaming.” He can hear the arch of one eyebrow in Henry’s voice even without looking at him; Walt has never known anyone’s mind quite like he knows Henry’s, even Martha’s, and he should probably feel guiltier about that but he is too relieved to have him back to feel anything else at the moment.

“I was awake. I was on a case. Trying to find out who killed a girl.”

“Did you solve it? Did you catch them?”

Walt smiles because it is so like Henry to focus on that instead of what Walt is trying to say; that he missed him. “I did. I caught him and saved another girl from something awful. But that’s not my point.”

“No?” 

Someone else might find monosyllabic answers infuriating, but Walt has perfected them over the years. And he’s still too relieved to be frustrated with Henry. “I saw you. And you vanished.” His voice isn’t supposed to sound as tight as it is, and he’s glad for the glare on the road because he can use that as an excuse for the way his eyes burn just a little.

“Walt.” 

He knows what that pitch in Henry’s voice means, but he does not turn his way.

“Walt.”

Until he does. There are those eyes again, dark as the spaces between the stars, and just as kind as the moon. And the bruises. And the cuts. Which should not be there. Which he will pay penance for when he figures out how.

Henry takes their hands, still joined, and presses Walt’s knuckles to his lips. “I am here.”

Somehow Henry always seems to know what Walt is thinking. Somedays it is old. Somedays it is bothersome. Today, well, today it just feels right, like Henry’s lips brushing against the cracked skin of his hands. It is known and pleasant and Walt would like nothing so much as to sink into it because things have been stressful and too much lately, non-stop, and there is no end to it in sight. “You’re staying,” he says and catches the quirk of Henry’s eyebrow before he returns his gaze to the road. “You’re staying.”

They’re two words, just two words. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a lot of words. Walt knows. He should. He’s read quite a lot of words over the years, books he poured over all through school, tucked away in the library, dog-eared copies of classics he and Henry traded back and forth, lovingly kept hardbacks that Martha would happily gift him every Christmas and Father’s Day, a tradition that Cady has taken to keeping. So, he knows that two words are not sufficient in so many ways, in so many cases, but this is him. This is him and Henry, and two words can mean more than fifteen hundred when it is them.

Henry brushes his lips over Walt’s knuckles again before laying their threaded hands in his lap, and Walt thinks he can hear him thinking, hear the wheels turning and the truth fixing itself there, the fact that this could all go wrong, that Henry could end up back in jail for something that is not his fault or worse. They linger there, all those words; Walt can feel them circling, but Henry doesn’t say any of them.

Walt isn’t going to let that happen. He said never. He meant never. Henry knows that he is a man of his word. 

“Perhaps,” Henry starts after a few more moments of comfortable silence, “it would be best for you to stay with me tonight. A bit more proof that I am not a flight risk.”

Cady told Walt what was said in front of the judge, what May Stillwater said, how she described what family was, what Henry was, a bear standing to protect the ones it loved. Walt could never have said it half as well, though he agrees with it, and he will always be in her debt that she said that for Henry, for them. Now it’s his turn to stand for what he loves. “I’d rather stay for you than to prove any point.” It’s more direct than what they normally say, do. It’s a small town. It’s Wyoming. There are boundaries and lines and kisses in the dark under the moon. That does not mean there can’t be more.

“Oh,” Henry says, and Walt knows there’s a smile with this one, lazy and languid and slow like floating on your back in a stream, or huddling around a campfire, arms entwined.

Walt thinks about slowly discarding every piece of fabric Henry is wearing, one after the other until the only thing he can properly see is the man himself. He thinks about tracing his tongue gingerly across the wounds that have been inflicted on him, the healing and the never healed, the ones that go down, soul-deep. Henry wraps his other hand around their folded ones, hums, and Walt remembers Eurydice and Orpheus, separated, the way that Orpheus went into the dark to find her, won her, and then messed it all up by not obeying directions. Walt would never be that stupid. He knows what his lover’s hand feels like. He’d never be fooled by an imitation. He keeps driving them towards home, the way that Orpheus should have, clinging tightly and without ever looking back.


End file.
